These are the specifications for my new PC. My old system is now 8 years old and is showing its age. It takes at least 7 hardstarts to boot up.
Is this a satisfactory setup? It has not been built as yet, so changes can still be made.

I went for 8GB instead of 16, as I believe that some of my Apps, like Corel Painter X, old Photoshop 5.5, and some others won't work on the 16 GB.

I bought a desktop with similar specs a few months ago, but with an i7. Render times have spectaculary improved, compared to my old laptop (5+ years) and i haven't yet got close to using the full 8 gigs of Ram.
I am however still beating myself up for not investing the extra money for an ssd drive. So that would be my tip, add an ssd boot disk.

I bought a desktop with similar specs a few months ago, but with an i7. Render times have spectaculary improved, compared to my old laptop (5+ years) and i haven't yet got close to using the full 8 gigs of Ram.
I am however still beating myself up for not investing the extra money for an ssd drive. So that would be my tip, add an ssd boot disk.

Hi, I too have recently got a new desktop with an SSD boot drive. I'm just about to start installing stuff and I've been wondering where to install to? Does anyone have any advice on what to install to the SSD (just Win7 OS at the moment) and what to install to my separate HDD (was thinking of putting DAZ Studio there instead of to SSD, but not sure of the pros and cons)?

Thanks for all that input guys, yes I can stretch to i7 and 16GB. The 8GB was chosen as I read somewhere that my 32bit apps would not work on 64 bit with 16GB. I looked at an SSD drive, but don't know how to use it.

Thanks for all that input guys, yes I can stretch to i7 and 16GB. The 8GB was chosen as I read somewhere that my 32bit apps would not work on 64 bit with 16GB. I looked at an SSD drive, but don't know how to use it.

And should I upsize the cooling to: 2x 120mm Red LED Fans, 1x 200mm Red Led Fan? Any suggestions?

Or is that overdoing it?

An SSD drive is like a small hard disk with no moving parts, (kinda like a usb stick on steroids :lol: ). It has much faster access times, but isn't very good with large files. Your OS will run from the ssd, it will boot probably twice as fast and be more responsive in general.
Depending on the size of your ssd, you can also install your software on it (Program Files). They'll start up much faster too, but once running you won't notice much difference. Photoshop for example, i've heard it will start up in just over one second.
Your data files will still go on a regular large HDD.

That should cover the basic use of an ssd. If you really want to get the most of it, you got some googling to do, there are lots of tips and tricks out there to improve your system speed with an ssd.

Wancow advises to stay with Nvidia, no-one else remarked about the chosen graphics card for the new setup.
I am having 2nd thoughts about the Nvidia graphics card, it seems that Nvidia fell out with XFX, that seems a shame.
I believe thatt XFX makes best graphic cards.
Any thoughts on this?

XFX doesn't make the 'best' cards...it made good cards, but so do a bunch of others. XFX had better than average support, though...and that's what gave the impression of 'best'.

The thing is, Nvidia cards, on the whole have less OpenGL problems and better driver support/quicker 'fix' time than AMD cards. For a rendering machine, even if you aren't going super highend (Quadro workstation card), Nvidia is pretty much the choice...mainly because their drivers are usually problem free with OpenGL (unlike the often to frequently problem drivers from AMD and the more often than not to always problematic Intel drivers).

And no, OpenGL/OpenCL/CUDA don't matter all that much for rendering with DS...that's all handled by the CPU, if there's an OpenGL problem and you can't even open the program (the viewport is OpenGL and so are elements of the UI/QT4 underpinnings), then it doesn't matter how 'good' the card is, if it's the reason.

Wancow advises to stay with Nvidia, no-one else remarked about the chosen graphics card for the new setup.
I am having 2nd thoughts about the Nvidia graphics card, it seems that Nvidia fell out with XFX, that seems a shame.
I believe thatt XFX makes best graphic cards.
Any thoughts on this?

I don't know much about videocards, but from personal experience Nvidia has never let me down while AMD and it's drivers have been such a pita for me in the past that i'm never going there again.

Thanks for that info wancow, BlackFeather and mjc1016. That fixes the graphics card, a Nvidia it shall be. Still looking into the SSD, quite a few conflicting opinions on that one. Some for, some against.

Thanks for that info wancow, BlackFeather and mjc1016. That fixes the graphics card, a Nvidia it shall be. Still looking into the SSD, quite a few conflicting opinions on that one. Some for, some against. This is how the specs look now, the red text is what I intend to get, the green I am still thinking about. Should I go for the higher end chipset? I appreciate your advice!

Total memory in use: 32% (I know that's a good number, it means there is plenty to work Daz)

this is about all I can find out about my computer system. This is my second HP, my other one is about 8 yrs old with XP and it still works. The best one I've ever had, it cost me $700 for the CPU itself. This one was over $600. I am very pleased with both HP computers, the XP (HP Pavillion) is a real work horse just a bit old for the programs I use now.
The one thing I did that helps is have Windows 7 act like XP, by shutting down all the special effects and it really seems to help run Daz better and quicker. I also use Illustrator 10, which was made during Windows XP, I've had it better than 10 yrs now, and thankfully WIndows 7 FINALLY came out with the Service Pack that lets me run the program in this computer. I have a music recording program that had said to shut down all other memories, so I got to thinking about it for Daz and did the same and it helped.
I know memory is a big factor in working with any program. To show how old my XP is, 512 MB was the big number at the time. It ran Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and other Adobe/Macromedia programs perfectly, which were made for 256 MB. SO freeing up memory for Daz helped alot.

I am also wondering about hardware requirements. The wife has finally taken an appreciation for my DAZaddiction, and has given me the green light for a new system. Now I gotta figure out which configuration will work best.

Of course, I would have to up the power supply a bit, and get two cooling fans.

The determining factor will be how many threads that D|S 4.5 Pro supports for rendering. No sense in going with 32 threads if the program only supports 12. And yes, I know I have spec'd with a gamer video card, but I do play a bit of WoW.

Current rig is i7 875K OC'd at 3.5 GHz (8 threads) with 16GB RAM on the Asus Maximus III Gene board.
Using a nVidia GF GTX660Ti SC for video. (the wife MADE me upgrade from the HD 6850 OC I had).

So, any ideas on how many threads that D|S 4.5 Pro can take advantage of?

Thanks for that info wancow, BlackFeather and mjc1016. That fixes the graphics card, a Nvidia it shall be. Still looking into the SSD, quite a few conflicting opinions on that one. Some for, some against.

Then how about some facts?

Firstly, SSD's are vastly quicker than their HDD counterparts, but also significantly more expensive for less storage as a result. Most owners tend to use the SSD for their main system drive whilst keeping media and large installations on a separate HDD. At the moment, the largest SSD that I can find commercially is around 500Gb, while HDD's at 2Tb+ are available for less cost.

I haven't noticed a vast improvement in speed myself since using an SSD, but it is there. The only person who can decide if that extra speed is worth the cost though is you.

An SSD was in my configuration because I wanted fast load times for the OS and the programs I will be using the most. The storage drive will be the large mechanical drive.

What I am really wondering is just how many cores or threads D|S can take advantage of.

With my quad core AMD (4 threads), I was using all 4 cores at almost 100% load during a render.
With my quad core Intel i7, I was using all 4 cores (8 threads), again at almost 100% load during a render.

Getting a 6 core i7 (12 threads) is the cheapest solution, but will I once again see all 12 threads be at 100% load?

A single Xeon CPU would allow for 16 threads.

Getting a dual Xeon setup would provide 32 threads.

A dual Xeon setup will add almost $4000 to the cost of the system, so before I blow a big load of cash on a new system, I have to know how many threads D|S will use.

The proposed system will use Windows 7 Pro, 64 Bit edition.

Alternately, I could spring for the new Mac Pro, due out in a few months, but I am reluctant to line Apple's pockets with my hard earned cash AND I much prefer being able to build my own computers.

The latest advice is to update all those specs, i.e. hdd 2 terabyte + add a 120 ssd. Also the latest NVIDIA card.
Problem is: where do I put DAZ etc? I believe the OS goes on the ssd, I want to put DAZ on the hdd, so how does DAZ (and the other programs) access all the areas it needs to install to? And can I really use the apps from Vista 32 bit (4GB) on Windows 7 64 bit (16GB)?

The latest advice is to update all those specs, i.e. hdd 2 terabyte + add a 120 ssd. Also the latest NVIDIA card.
Problem is: where do I put DAZ etc? I believe the OS goes on the ssd, I want to put DAZ on the hdd, so how does DAZ (and the other programs) access all the areas it needs to install to? And can I really use the apps from Vista 32 bit (4GB) on Windows 7 64 bit (16GB)?

To the best of my knowledge, if you have programs that worked on Vista 32 bit, they "should" work as 32 bit programs under Win 7 64 bit.

You will, of course, need to re-install them from your media.

As to my planned system, I will probably go with a 256 GB SSD. Windows and some utility software get installed there. I may also install my most used programs on that drive as well, depending on the remaining space. The hard drive will be used for data storage and any remaining programs. I will also have a small hard drive to mirror my SSD to every 30 days. That way, if the SSD goes BOOM, I will have a backup OS drive.

Windows 7 can be customized so that the folders usually found on the OS drive can be installed on a different drive (ie, program files, My Documents, etc).

The overprovisioning mentioned in the article is exactly why I would use the drive for Win 7, a few utility programs (antivirus, etc) and the main applications I use for graphics design. I would not want to use more than 50% of the available drive space, so that as the NAND cells become corrupt, I won't have any issues regarding drive space for a few years. By then, SSDs should be down in price and I will simply replace it with a 512 GB drive - probably at a lower price!

But the big bugaboo in my planned system is just how many threads will D|S take advantage of? I know it uses 8 threads, but will it be able to use 12, 16, 32, etc? A 12 thread CPU is around $1200; while 16 thread CPUs (at similar clock speeds) start at around $2000. That is a HUGE difference for only 4 more threads. Then again if D|S can use 64 threads, I might as well stick with the cheapest CPU since there is no way I can afford a $20,000 system.

I have seen nothing in the hardware info that specifically states how many threads that D|S can use.

And yes, I will be asking Tech Support at DAZ about the threads supported, but since you have essentially what I am planning on purchasing - or at least it seems that way - your performance with this standard render will give me a good idea as to the performance boost of my planned system.